Mabel Stark; Tiger Trainer Extraordinaire

Mabel Stark may never have been a household name but in the world of the Circus her fame spread wide and during her prime her picture would grace many a magazine cover, newspaper article and circus posters. She was the world's premier tiger from the 1920's through many decades and was considered the word's first woman tiger trainer.

Despite the level of fame which Mabel Stark reached in her career, very little is known about her life that can be cemented as truth and her history is hard to trace after she left her home state of Kentucky to, literally, run away with the circus. As is often the way with circus performers, Stark's life became subject to myth and exaggeration when told to reporters.

With a biopic in rumoured production following a fictionalised account of her life, the life of Mabel Stark could soon be gracing cinema screens around the globe. So who is this woman that was born Mary Haynie in Princeton, Kentucky in 1889? What is known for certain is that Mabel was one of seven children and when her parents died within two years of each other she was orphaned. Having spent a short amount of time living with her aunt she travelled to St Mary's Hospital in Louisville and began training as a nurse.

Once Mabel left Louisville (perhaps after a failed marriage) her history becomes hard to trace and has become the stuff of legends. Many theories state that Stark spent time in a mental health institution where she was subjected to the practices that came from a lack of understanding of the illnesses but by 1911 she had certainly joined the circus and was a member of the Al G. Barnes troop where she would meet the animal trainer Al Sands.

As one of the horseback riders that would perform before and in-between the larger acts, Stark held dreams of working with the big cats that she had fallen in love with during childhood trips to zoos. Mabel began working with a big cat handler named Louis Roth, whom she would later marry, and soon became a tiger trainer in the ring and by 1916 was training the show's major tiger act.

In 1922 Mabel left the Al G. Barnes Circus to join one of the then-largest names in circus: the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. The move heralded her as a star after her performance at Madison Square Garden, surrounded by snarling tigers and a black panther, bought her image across the covers of magazines and newspapers as journalists filled their pages with stories of the leather-clad blonde woman that faced vicious big cats as if it were an everyday activity.

Sharing a stage and training animals that are natural killers is not without its perils and history is full of fatalities and casualties, Mabel would join the list of casualties in 1928. Already no stranger to cuts, gashes and gouges, Stark lost her footing in the mud during a show in Bangow, Maine. Mabel was seriously mauled by her tigers and suffered a wounding that nearly severed her leg, put a hole in her shoulder, tore a deltoid muscle from her body, lacerated her face and a host of other injuries that would mean return visits to hospital thought would not deter her from the wing. Mabel returned, still bandaged and propped up by a cane, to face the same tigers in the ring only weeks after they'd tried snacking on her.

In 60 years of working with tigers and big cats, breaking many conventions of the "big cat act," Mabel Stark would often suffer wounds and more serious injuries at the hands of her beloved big cats but would not stay away. Commanding the largest cat act at the time she would face 18 big cats in her ring. Her celebrity would often spread beyond the confines of the circus tent and the 60's saw her appearing on television including an appearance on 'What's My Line?'

After more than 50 years in the circus, her age itself a thing of legendary elusivity, Stark returned to California in the 1960's and would finish her career away from the circus performing at the Jungleland compound at Thousand Oaks. After issues with the park's new owners in 1968, Mabel Stark hang up her whip and left. Shortly after one of her tigers escaped and, not involving Mabel who believed she could have safely secured the animal, when it was caught was shot.

With a life devoted to her tigers, the news of the killing was devastating to Mabel Stark. Only three months later her body was found at her home. She had killed herself with an overdose of barbiturates on April 20, 1968. In the words of her biography, life with the tigers was "a matchless thrill, and life without it is not worth while to me."

Her death was covered by the Los Angeles Times who placed her age at 79, others have placed it closer to 86. In true circus performer tradition, Stark even managed to keep her age a secret to the end.

As travelling circuses have long since abandoned animal acts and the sight of a brave soul placing their head into the jaws of a ferocious beast is one no longer seen within the confines of the Big Top, it is worth a glance into the history of Mabel Stark; the first female and greatest tiger trainer.